Heh Tom,
That story about your father's drill is too funny. Does he know now?
I think all of us tinker'ers have a similar story. I took apart a mechanical clock at around the same age, right down to uncoiling the spring ... oops!@!. Naturally there was no way I was going to be able to get that sucker back in ... thus end of clock. I think this is all part of the learning how to put things back together again process ... and now witness my sons going through the same process, which has slowly advanced from using any tool they could find to smash things apart ... to now actually working out how they should come apart :). One of them has even managed to get a few things back together, er ... though I am not sure whether they are still operational :)
I just have to make sure they know what they can work with and what is currently out of their range ... :wink:
Pete